Obtaining IPv4 addresses has been getting more difficult in recent years, as ARIN and the four other Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) keep tightening their policies and procedures. So with the well running dry, where can an intrepid IP address user turn to get that IPv4 fix? The black market, of course. Economists have been predicting the emergence of a black market for IPv4 addresses for some time. Some industry experts say it's already here. We say, not so fast.
Getting addresses from the local RIR is basically freeP—even today. The procedures are tedious and you only get as much as you can show you're actually going to use, but even if you get the smallest possible block (a /24 or 256 addresses) you barely pay more than a thousand dollars in yearly registration costs; having a lawyer review the contract that you have to sign for all of this is probably more. And the costs per address go down as the number you hold increases. So obviously there is little reason to buy IP addresses on the black market today. That will, of course, change once the RIRs run out of IPv4 addresses. At that point, investors that bought up the assets of ISPs that went bankrupt may be sitting pretty, just like HP, which now has two /8 blocks to its name. That's right: HP has nearly one percent of all IPv4 addressesf—it got block 15, and then it got block 16 after buying DEC.
Even if we assume the above imbalance of supply and demand, that doesn't necessarily create a black market. The whole idea of a black market is that the trading happens on the down-low. That's not going to happen with IP address trading as long as every computer comes with the traceroute command installed by default and Internet routing publicly exposes which addresses are used where. It only took me a minute to determine that in addition to the 15.0.0.0/8 and 16.0.0.0/8 blocks, HP is currently using another 30 (much smaller) blocks of IPv4 space.
I got mine a couple days ago. I just got back from a business trip so I haven1't been able to see it until today. Overall itf's not too bad... it is actually somewhat similar to my old Fossil watch except that it has the black steel appearance. It has a round face with a non-functional bezel (my Fossil 's turns). It has a pretty cool deep blue face with silver hands. I would say ita's worth the money for being a no-name, and I mean that literally, I dona't see a name on it at all. As I had intended, it 's a decent watch that I='m not worried about beating on. I>'ll see if I canu't post a link to some pix in the next day or two.
